


halcyon years

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, Lawyer Sam, M/M, Soldier Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9357659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: Sam would recognize those eyes anywhere, that mouth, spreading into a smile that draws out laugh lines, making Sam sharply, achingly aware of just how long it's been.A story in which people change but love remains the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a few allusions to PTSD throughout, including one fairly obvious scene. Nothing particularly violent or disturbing, but this is me erring on the side of caution.

"Come on, Sam. You're the best closer in the city, you'll be in and out before breakfast. You want me to beg? I can beg."

Sam swivels in lazy arcs in his chair, tapping his pen against his desk, and takes his sweet time giving an answer. Chuck squirms a little in his seat, fidgeting with his hipster glasses and looking every inch the starving artist despite having made a painfully clear effort to clean himself up.

"This is my livelihood, man. I can't do anything else. Fuck, I'm not even that great at this, but they're screwing me big time. I don't need a law degree from Stanford to know that."

"If you're trying to kiss my ass, Chuck, then you're not doing a very good job," Sam says, giving Chuck that smile he's perfected over the years – accommodating from one angle, dangerous from another. It's second nature by now, which is something he doesn't examine too closely. It's all a chess game and he's just playing to win: backing pieces into corners until he's covered all his blind spots, then watching them fall into the palm of his hand. Besides, he likes getting his kicks in where he can, what with his days consisting mostly of designer suits with sticks up their asses.

"Oh, no. No, no," Chuck flushes then pales, hands starting to flail, "that's not what I meant. You know that's not what I meant. These are the desperate pleas of a desperate man, Sam. I'd sell you my soul if I could."

"So here's the thing, Chuck," Sam says, slowly uncurling from his chair to extend to his full six foot four and then looking down, way down at Chuck. "My time is valuable. I juggle 23 clients across four continents and dropping one of them? Take the largest motherfucking pile of money you can imagine, then multiply that by twenty. That's how much I'd be in the red. And you know how many sob stories land on the doorstep of the city's best closer? If I took them all in, I'd be the one begging for scraps."

Chuck looks like he's close to pissing his pants. Sam tilts his head as he slips his pen into his jacket.

"But I like you, Chuck. We go way back, don't we? So send me the contract and I'll see what I can do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go talk someone out of doing something incredibly stupid." Sam's at the door when he glances back. "Oh, and Meg will get you a cab to my tailor. If I'm gonna be taking you with me to court, we need to get you into a real goddamn suit."

*

By 2pm Sam's forgotten all about Chuck. The morning had quickly snowballed into one of those days where people keep telling him you win some, you lose some, and it makes him want to punch everyone in the face. He can take defeat like a man, same as anyone; what eats him up is how easily every loss could be a win if his clients stopped waving their dicks around and let him do his goddamn job.

He sits on the couch, elbows on his knees, knowing he's in danger of tipping into that headspace where nothing thrives but his doubts, circling like vultures.

"Ruby moved the partners' meeting to 4:30. I told Mr. Capriglione you'd call him at 6," Meg calls out from her desk instead of speaking through the intercom like Sam requested – leech-like in the way she latches onto every opportunity she can get to flout his authority. Given the shit he's waded through today, he'd fire her if she wasn't so efficient.

"Fine," Sam says, loosening his tie an inch before standing up. "I'm going out for a walk."

There's nothing some fresh air and a triple shot latte can't fix.

The coffee shop across the street is quiet this time of day, suffuse with warmth from the afternoon sun and the aroma of a chocolatey dark roast. Sam takes deep, slow breaths as he waits in line and then by the counter, feeling looser already, present instead of lost.

"Triple shot latte, extra hot, for Sam."

He looks up from checking his phone, opening his mouth to say thanks before the word dies abruptly in his throat.

"Sam. Jesus. Sam Campbell, as I live and breathe."

Sam stares, blinking a couple times because he thinks the four hours of sleep a night for the last five nights have finally come back to bite him in the ass. But the barista's still standing there, still looking like –

"Dean."

It comes out soft, strange and fragile after being unsaid all these years, even though there's no mistake. Sam would recognize those eyes anywhere, that mouth, spreading into a smile that draws out laugh lines, making Sam sharply, achingly aware of just how long it's been.

"You – " he says, then stops, unsure of where to pick up this thread of theirs, or how. He'd panic, he'd even run, if he didn't feel, under all the shock turning his lips numb, a knot of steady heat at his core, pure and dense with memories of childhood and happiness and _Dean_.

What he ends up saying is, "How are you?" which makes Dean laugh and his eyes light up, so green Sam feels like he's someplace where he can smell the earth and see sky stretching out, unimpeded, for miles on all sides.

"If you've got time, I can take a break in 10."

Sam sits at the corner table, tearing idly at the sleeve of his latte, heart and hands jittery until Dean walks over with a plate in his hand, sliding into the empty seat across from Sam like it's a habit of theirs to meet like this.

"Banana bread. I remember you used to eat this stuff by the loaf. Your mom would bake 'em ten at a time."

Sam swallows and feels like panicking again, because this Dean is still more strange than familiar. This Dean is beautiful enough to make his chest hurt. This Dean makes him want to turn back the clock and makes him _want_ , all in one breath.

"I haven't had it in a while," he says unthinking, and then clamps his mouth shut.

He doesn't remember the last time he's let a truth, however small, slip out without vetting it first, having gone around the block enough times to know there's always something else you surrender in the process: a culpability, a weakness. And this one might be small, but it still feels damning. It tells Dean, if he pays attention, that Sam doesn't go home nearly as much as he should because he's a lousy son. That Sam's changed and there's no going back to the way things were, when he and Dean camped out in his backyard, sprawled on the grass, and whispered about touching the stars.

"So you – live here now? Can't imagine this is your scene." Christ. Now he just sounds like a condescending dick. What he really means to say is he remembers that Dean liked his space, his freedom, and coasting down wide open roads inhaling clean-smelling air, a world apart from this claustrophobic, concrete jungle.

But Dean shrugs like he's heard it before. "Been craving a change of pace. Figured I can't knock it 'til I try it. You're looking the part, though, hot shot. That power suit must've cost more than what I pay in rent."

Dean's smiling, lopsided, warm, like he's about to reach over and ruffle Sam's hair, and Sam hasn't felt this self-conscious since his first time in court, trying to knock an eight-month sentence down to community service for some punk-ass kid the system chewed up and spit back out one too many times.

"I, uh, I'm a lawyer," Sam says, shifting in his seat. "I'm just across the street actually."

"A lawyer." Dean's mouth wraps around the word like he's trying it out for size. "Huh. You always were freakishly smart, using those big words that had no business coming out of an eight-year-old. Too smart for Lawrence, that's for damn sure. Wife? Kids? White picket fence is probably hard to come by in these parts."

Sam lets out a laugh on his next exhale. "No wife or kids. Maybe if I didn't work so much."

"A workaholic, why am I not surprised," Dean murmurs. "C'mon, Sammy, there must be loads of hot chicks here with brains bigger than yours. All you gotta do is give 'em those wide puppy-dog eyes and they'll fall hook, line, and sinker."

Maybe it's the way Dean's looking at him now, with something heavier, headier under the warmth of that smile. Maybe it's hearing _Sammy_ after thinking for years he'd never hear it again, having made Dean its sole proprietor. Whatever the case may be, Sam's about to crawl out of his damn skin, so he does what any lawyer worth his salt would do under fire. He deflects.

"I'm sure you know all about the hot chicks here. Gonna tell me the Winchester charm only gets better with age?"

"I can still teach you a thing or two," says Dean, smug.

"Yea, okay, we'll see about that, Obi-Wan."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Dean's slouched in his seat, loose and easy, and Sam – God, Sam's missed this, so much he feels all the lost years like a thousand shallow cuts.

"So, what about you? Did you travel the world like you always wanted?"

Dean looks away from Sam for the first time and out the window.

"Yea, you could say that. I joined the Marines. Stayed for eight years and three tours." He turns back, face inscrutable, eyes hard enough to make something in Sam shake for just a second before they soften. "Then I decided it was enough patriotism for one lifetime. Took nearly three years to adjust to civilian life, but here I am. Joe Schmo. Taking out the trash, paying my taxes on time, the whole nine yards."

His arms are flung out as if to say _what you see is what you get, bitches_ , but Sam's not fooled, having had the years from five to fifteen to learn Dean cover to cover. He can see something in Dean that's gone dark, some part of him that was once beautiful and untouched, now burned beyond recognition. He wants to pull Dean across the table. He wants. He wants to lick into Dean's mouth and see if he can't cleanse him, peel off those scorched layers until he finds the boy he used to know, pure and whole.

Then, heart stuttering, he catches the time from the clock on the opposite wall.

"Damn it, I have to get back to the office. I – how about a beer tonight? I can meet you back here, whenever you get off."

Dean pauses, licking at his lips. "I don't really drink anymore. Doctor's orders."

His eyes are steady on Sam's, jaw hard – how he always looked when he set out to show the world he didn't give two shits about what it thought of him. It takes Sam a second to get his breath back and his throat unstuck.

"Okay. Then we can go to my place. There's a great joint around the corner that does killer bacon cheeseburgers."

Dean brightens then, like a kid on Christmas morning, nourishing the small part of Sam that thinks it might not be so hard to pick up where they left off.

"A man after my own heart. See you tonight. Sammy."


	2. Chapter 2

At a quarter past eight, Sam's standing in the middle of his office, taking stock of the objects within reach and thinking it might be quicker to murder his associate with his bare hands.

"So you lied to my face when you said you filed the claim this morning."

Edd shifts from one foot to the other, twitchy, paling by degrees.

"I didn't really _lie_ , per se. I was totally gonna file the claim, Sam. But then Michael gave me ten boxes worth of briefs to proof and he said – "

"Let's get one thing straight," Sam interrupts, closing his eyes briefly and pinching the bridge of his nose. "You're not Michael's associate. Or Zach's, or Ruby's. You're mine. Which means you do what I say, when I say it, and you don't just try your goddamn hardest to keep from fucking it up. You _don't fuck it up_. So what you're gonna do tomorrow is get on the phone with the patent office for as long as it takes to figure out who got there first so I can file an injunction before my client loses his entire livelihood. Or God help me I will ride your ass so hard you'll be begging me to fire you. Now get the hell out of my office."

The room falls silent as the grave until Edd squeaks, "Yes, sir," before scrambling for the exit.

Sam's already walking to his desk, rubbing at the back of his neck to try to work out the kinks, when he hears: "Remind me never to get on your bad side."

He turns, hand falling to his side. Dean's hovering just inside the doorway, surveying the office with long glances, like he's treading on a boundary he's not sure would be in his best interest to cross.

"Dean." For a second Sam just stands there, blinking at the incongruity of Dean in his torn jeans and his leather jacket next to all the polished surfaces, the collector's items lining the windows, worth his weight in gold, the bookshelves of _Civil Procedure: Theory & Practice_ and _Cases and Materials on Statutory Interpretation_. Then Sam remembers their plans. " _Crap_ , I'll lost track of time, didn't I. I'm sorry. It's been a hell of a day."

"Hey, no big deal, I get it." Dean pauses, then adds, "You didn't really have to take it out on the kid, though."

There's a careful measure of levity in his voice, something in his eyes within striking distance of disappointment, and Sam feels his chest tighten reflexively.

"I wouldn't be doing him any favors by coddling him," he says shortly, powering down his laptop and snapping it shut. "I went easy on him, believe me. Any other partner would've given him five minutes to pack his desk."

"Yea. Okay," Dean says evenly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Forget I said anything. I'm starving, man. You ready to go? All I've eaten today is caffeine and friggin' bran muffins. Low-fat, sugar-free. Don't people get that food's gonna taste like shit when you take all the good stuff out of it?"

Sam laughs outright, feeling those spaces in him loosen with a sigh. "Let's go clog up some arteries then."

The minute they step across the threshold of Sam's condo, carrying one greasy takeout bag each, Dean lets out a low whistle.

"We're definitely not in Kansas anymore." He toes his shoes off and pads, dumbstruck, to the floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the east wall, edge to edge. "Jesus, will you look at that view."

It's why Sam bought the place – the panorama of Central Park and the city twinkling at its periphery, most magnificent when the only evidence of the sun is a smudge the color of embers along the horizon.

He watches Dean flatten a hand against the glass, as if he can open it up and see how the wind smells 21 floors above the ground.

Sam loosens his tie and pulls it off, discarding it on the back of the sofa. Then he walks over to stand by Dean's shoulder, close enough to feel the heat coming off him the way Sam remembers: an inexhaustible warmth he used to siphon from Dean like it was a drug, prescribed to ward off fear and loneliness and pain.

"Any chance you're looking for a roommate?" Dean says, turning to glance at Sam with half a smile, not nearly as smart-ass as he intended, and it makes Sam swallow. Makes him want to flatten Dean against the glass and find out if that warmth tastes as sweet as it feels.

"You're letting your burger get cold," Sam says, voice coming out a little rough around the edges, taking a step back, then two, because the want is starting to twist into a need, more visceral and vicious, and a hell of a lot more dangerous. A thing he won't be able to root out if he lets it burrow too deep. "I'll get us some plates."

They eat at one end of the dining table Sam's never put to use, only bought because it's what you do when you get a place of your own: fill in the spaces until they feel like home. Except now, watching Dean get ketchup on his face, licking his fingers clean, still as messy as a five-year-old, Sam thinks he got it all wrong.

"So why a coffee shop?"

Dean pauses in the middle of cramming fries into his mouth. "What do you mean?"

Sam shrugs, staring at his half-eaten burger before putting it down. "Didn't you want to find a job you, I don't know, enjoy? You used to love cars, and building things."

Dean swallows, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "You gonna tell me you enjoy yours?"

"Well – yea." Sam frowns. "I mean, it's not perfect. I have my share of bad days, but yea. I do."

"Right," Dean says, watching Sam like he's still playing big brother, thinking Sam naive and humoring him anyway, the asshole. But before Sam can launch into a point-by-point defense, Dean adds, "It's nice giving people something to smile about. All I do is pour a cup of joe, steam a little milk, and I see them perk right up. Kind of amazing how simple it is, you know? Hey – you gonna eat those fries?"

It takes a second for the question to compute – leave it to Dean to drop something like that on Sam and not think it'll knock him sideways – before Sam finds his breath and says, "All yours."

A quiet minute ticks by, and he thinks this is how it feels when you drive out West and start filling your lungs with real air. How it must feel when you sit back and watch the sun set after years of neglect, engulfed by an awareness of what you've been missing. Sam shouldn't have expected anything less from Dean, who has always been straight with Sam regardless of what it costs him. Makes Sam feel raw even though it's Dean baring the truth.

"I gotta say," says Dean, finally breaking the silence, "as awesome as the view is, the place could stand a little more – color, clutter, _something_. Feels like, I don't know, a museum. Like an alarm's gonna start blaring if I touch anything."

Sam pushes a fry around on his plate and shrugs. "I'm not home all that much. And when I do come home, I usually bring work."

He's aware after the excuses are out of his mouth that he sounds like a sad, lonely son of a bitch. When he looks up, Dean's watching him again, this time with something that comes too close to pity for comfort.

"Dude. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but you really need to find yourself a woman. Or, Christ, just get out more."

Sam's quiet for a long while before he says, "There was someone. Years ago. Before I got into law school."

Dean respectfully waits a beat, then, when Sam fails to elaborate, demands, "And?"

"Jess. Her name was Jess." Sam drags a hand through his hair and down his neck. "She was smart, kicked my ass in every class we had together. Funny, kind, terrifying when she got angry. Beautiful and barely even knew it. We were ready to get married. We made it to the church, down the aisle. She was wearing this – perfect dress, the perfect smile, trying not to cry, and – I couldn't do it. I couldn't go through with it."

"You're kidding me," Dean says, eyebrows nearly up to his hairline. "You pulled a _Runaway Bride_?"

Sam winces. For all it's been eight years, the spot still feels sore. "I was 22, all right? I thought I was ready. Turned out I wasn't."

It's not the whole truth, not by a long shot, but Dean's dragged enough out of him for one night, left his ribs feeling pried open. (The damnedest thing is: it's not painful, just terrifying, like he's braced against the hatch of a plane, about to free-fall.)

"Guess it just wasn't meant to be."

Sam smiles a little, knowing that out of all the nonbelievers, Dean would be the first to tell fate where to stick it. "Guess so."

"Besides, it would've tore Dad up if he'd missed out on your big day."

Standing at the altar Sam had thought about John Winchester, how he might've looked in the front row, awkward as hell in a suit and tie but proud that Sam was bound for the beautiful life that John never quite managed.

"How is John?"

Dean pauses, and Sam knows the answer, sees it in those eyes that always give Dean away to the people who know him best. To Sam, which feels like a comfort, however perverse.

"He's beyond the pearly gates. Happy I hope. It was a stroke that got him in the middle of the night. Five years ago."

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam says quietly, fingers curling around the instinct to reach over and touch Dean, somewhere, anywhere, to soothe the residual grief, imprints left by a loss that should've been shared, not borne alone. "I'm so sorry."

*

Two days pass before he makes it back to the coffee shop.

"You look like shit," Dean says generously when he hands Sam his latte.

"You really know how to cheer a guy up, thanks," Sam deadpans.

He walks over to the corner table and drops down into a chair, stretching out his legs, gripping his cup so hard the milk sloshes out. Dean appears a minute later, sliding a plate in front of him.

He rubs at his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, trying not to replay the courtroom drama that just went down for the fiftieth time.

"Someone's gonna start noticing all the banana bread you're giving out for free."

He opens his eyes. Dean's smiling at him, all bright and mischievous at the corners, of course he goddamn is, making Sam feel like an undeserving piece of shit.

"Pam can dock it from my pay," Dean shrugs. "But she won't, because she thinks you have a perky ass. Her words, not mine."

"Great," Sam mumbles, then breaks off a piece of bread.

Dean's eyes narrow. "Okay, lay it on me. Seriously, man. It's not healthy keeping all that stress bottled up so tight."

Sam tightens his jaw. "I'm fine."

"I'm pretty sure you're not."

"It's not your problem, all right?"

"Never stopped me before."

Jesus, he's a persistent fucker.

"Fine," Sam snaps, throwing his hands up in mock defeat. "You wanna know my problem? I just had a judge deny my motion to dismiss a case that wouldn't hold water in any other courtroom because he thinks I fucked his wife and this is his pathetic, petty way of returning the favor. A case I took on _pro bono_ because I thought, what the hell, it's no skin off my back."

For a minute Dean just stares with an irritatingly flawless poker face.

Then he asks, "Did you fuck his wife?"

"Jesus," Sam says. "Your faith in me is incredible. No, I didn't fuck his wife, Dean."

"Okay, all right, can't blame a guy for asking. Something must've made him think – "

"Can we just – can we not talk about it anymore?" Sam cuts him off, then looks away. He's been having trouble thinking, trouble _breathing_ in this city lately, like there's been pollution sinking below his skin from day one, accumulating by degrees, releasing enough poison that something in him will be dead before long.

"Yea, okay." There's a beat, and then: "I believe you, Sammy."

Suddenly, Sam wants to get the hell out of here. Wants to drive, fly, run as far away as possible with Dean in tow, because maybe something small but essential in Sam, in them, can be salvaged.

"Let's go back to Kansas," he blurts out before he can talk himself out of it. "Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All legal shenanigans borrowed from the _Suits_ episode, "Errors and Omissions."


	3. Chapter 3

Sam had been 14 the first time he traveled by plane. They would've driven if John hadn't been laid up with a broken femur – all 1800 miles from Kansas to California, because he and Dean had never gone beyond Junction City let alone crossed state lines, but mostly because Dean was honest-to-God terrified of flying. He'd white-knuckled it the whole way, nearly broke every bone in Sam's hand, dry heaved on descent while Mom rubbed his back, then, tight-lipped and pale as a sheet, told Sam, _if you don't get your overachieving ass into Stanford, you will never hear the fucking end of it from me_.

Sam, at 30, figures a lot has changed since then. He watches Dean rifle through SkyMall, slouched and splayed in the space afforded by first class, and lets himself mourn, briefly, for the boy Dean outgrew in the time that Sam quit looking.

They've barely reached cruising altitude when Dean jabs him with an elbow.

"Dude," he stabs a finger at the catalogue, "look at this sweet-ass helicopter. You can control it with your _phone_. Remember the dinky remote-controlled one Dad got us that didn't even fly straight? It's high time for an upgrade, Sammy."

Sam rubs at his bruised arm and rolls his eyes. "I'm not eight anymore, Dean."

"SkyMall says it's 'fun for all ages'."

"It's SkyMall's _job_ to peddle this kind of crap."

"C'mon, it's only $249.99!" Dean's starting to pout now, and it's a look that really, really shouldn't be so stupidly endearing on grown man. "That's less than the ridiculous wad of cash in your wallet."

Sam opens his mouth, then frowns. "Wait. How do you know how much cash is in – give it back, Dean."

Dean plays dumb for a grand total of two seconds before he smirks, eyes pinning Sam down like he's reminding Sam who has the leverage, mouth still playful, pliant, and just like that, there's heat licking at Sam's insides with forked tongues. He tries his damnedest to stay still in his seat.

"You're slipping, Sammy. Took so long for you to notice, it quit being fun." Dean gives him a once-over, lashes sweeping down and up like a single beat of feathered wings. If Sam were crazy, he'd say Dean Winchester just checked him out, the same way he used to check out all the girls in town, broadcasting that lazy, shameless appreciation that always made Sam's cheeks heat. "I admit, I wasn't sure I could pull it off, what with you wearing those pants that hug your ass so damn tight."

If Sam were crazy, he'd think Dean wanted to get _into_ his pants, judging by the way Dean's starting to crowd his space, voice nearly a goddamn octave lower than normal. But then Dean's retreating, turning back to his stupid magazine and licking a thumb to turn the page.

"Relax, Sammy. I won't do anything you don't want me to do."

Sam spends the next hour feeling half out of his skin trying to anticipate Dean's next move. Only, Dean doesn't follow through. He just grows quieter as the trip wears on, increasingly distracted, until he's down to one-word answers by the time they cross into Douglas and Sam's wondering if this is a _Three Faces of Eve_ kind of deal.

When they pull up to the house, his mom's already waiting for them on the front steps, hair swept over one shoulder, wrapped in the shawl that's almost as old as Sam, permeated with the smell of home. When he kills the engine, he looks over at Dean, which is when all the pieces of his Dean-shaped puzzle slot into place. Dean's _nervous_. Dean's fidgeting in his seat like a five-year-old, knee bouncing erratically, face as close to deer-in-headlights as Sam's ever seen it. And Sam would laugh, from some place deep in his belly, if he didn't know moments like this come around about as often as Halley's Comet. Didn't know that if there's any hard and fast rule in Dean's book, then it's walling off all those parts of himself that might give away the flaws in his design, which, since the age of eight, has been one part bluster and two parts flying by the seat of his pants.

"It's pretty much guaranteed she'll shed a few tears, just so you know," Sam says, right hand steadfast against his thigh because the alternative would be pressing it against Dean's knee. "In case you still freak out whenever a woman starts crying."

Dean looks at Sam, startled, until his mouth catches up.

"Let's get one thing straight. Winchesters don't _freak out_. Over women. Over anything," he says, finally sounding like himself for the first time since their descent into Kansas City, shoulders loosening at the same pace as the spaces in Sam's chest.

"Yea, okay, James Bond."

By the time they're halfway across the lawn, Mom's eyes are already damp.

"Dean Winchester. You're a little taller than I remember." She pulls Dean in for a hug as soon as his feet hit the top step, one hand splayed across his nape to hold him there before she pulls back to take a good look at him. "Even more handsome."

"Ms. Campbell," Dean says, voice rough like it's bearing the immense weight of an emotion he can't even begin to parse. Sam feels its shadow, curling around his throat.

"Mary," she amends, smiling bright as the sun. "Don't make me feel older than I already am."

"You don't look a day over 25."

Her eyes slide to Sam, glittering. "That mouth can still talk him out of all kinds of trouble, can't it."

"You're letting him into the house at your own risk," Sam says, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, inhaling that scent of lavender that's clung to her all his life.

"Hey, I'm standing right here." Dean tries to glare at him and misses by a mile, looking too content to put up a fight. Looking like he's wandered half his life trying to figure out where he belongs, only to realize he's been there before.

"Let's get you boys fed. How about some PB&J?"

When they're seated at the breakfast table, one glass of milk each, Sam spends a few quiet minutes just watching the tableau: the waning daylight angling through the square windows to warm the curve of Dean's neck, Mom's well-worn path through the kitchen, Dean's smile going from faint to full-blown when he gets her to laugh, her eyes fixed on Dean like her heart's bursting and breaking all at once, seeing glimpses of the boy who tracked too many footprints through this house to ever wipe clean.

"You want the crust cut off?" she asks after setting two plates down.

"Yea." Dean swallows. "I'd love that."

"Thanks, Mom." Sam swallows, too, having a hard time remembering the last PB&J he had, and the last time he felt this young and coddled, insulated from all the noise he's used to. The last time he eased off the gas, knowing that nothing good ever came out of living too fast.

"A family just moved into your old house, Dean. A few months ago," his mom says, sweeping the crusts off their plates and tossing them in the trash. "A young couple with a little girl who's starting to toddle across the yard now. Pretty much the cutest thing."

"Can't believe that old, rickety frame is still standing," Dean says around a mouthful of his sandwich, a smear of peanut butter across his lower lip. Sam twitches with the effort to keep from leaning across the table and sucking it clean.

"They renovated a good chunk of it. Tore out the porch, installed a bay window in the sitting room."

"Dad's turning in his grave right about now," Dean mutters.

Sam nudges his knee against Dean's. "Wonder if anyone's dug up that time capsule we buried in the backyard."

Dean lights up.

"Do I want to know what you boys stashed in there?" Mom says, eyes dancing with mirth.

Sam shrugs and grins. "Nothing out of the ordinary for a couple of pre-pubescent dweebs."

Dean scoffs. "Yea, one of us was a dweeb all right, and it wasn't me. Who _wouldn't_ be stoked to dig up a monster slinky and a cassette of _Back in Black_?"

"Someone with good taste?" says Sam, all innocence, and Dean's eyes narrow. It's an old game of theirs: taking jabs at each other's music, on principle if nothing else, stopping just short of leaving bruises.

"The universe works in mysterious ways, doesn't it?" His mom cuts in, giving him a pointed look. "Bringing the two of you together again, in a coffee shop of all places. Feels like something bigger than serendipity if you ask me."

Dean's eyes drop to the table, then slide back up to Sam, suddenly a little wary, determined, scared, _haunted_ , and Sam's already stopped breathing before Dean says: "It wasn't the universe, Mary, it was me. I found Sam. Took me longer than expected, although, in hindsight, I should've known there'd be about a million Samuel Campbells. After that, figuring out where he worked was a walk in the park. You can probably piece together the rest."

The words flow out smooth and steady, and if Sam had to guess, he'd say Dean's been working up to this confession for a while, finally deciding that it won't get easier than this, with Mary as a buffer between him and anything Sam might lob his way.

Sam just sits there stunned, untethered, with everything turning to smoke around him except Dean, who's solid and real and living proof that a man's only as good as his word, so goddamn beautiful Sam can hardly bear it.

"You said you'd look me up in 10 years," he says thickly.

Dean smiles, right shoulder hitching up in a shrug. "I'm five years late. So sue me."

Sam chokes out a laugh and turns to his mom, helpless. For all he earns a living knowing all the right things to say, he's coming up empty now, when it really matters.

She looks back at him and says, like her faith never deserted her, "Since that first day you met, when Dean stopped those bullies from taking your bike, you two were something special."

*

That night, for the first time in recent memory, Sam sleeps without dreaming. Without waking up in irregular intervals, sometimes drenched in sweat, feeling cornered, hunted by some yellow-eyed thing demanding his dues.

When he does wake up, it's not to the morning, but to the sound of Dean through the thin walls, yelling himself hoarse, terror violent and palpable.

It takes Sam a second to remember where he is, and then he's bolting out of bed and over to the next room, nearly knocking the door off its hinges.

Dean's thrashing in his sleep, sheets tangled around his legs, chest bare and slick with sweat.

"Harvelle, no! You're not going back in there, goddamn it, you can't save him. Do you hear me? Get your ass back to base _now_!" Dean's bellowing, loud enough to bring the entire house down.

Sam doesn't hesitate before he's climbing onto the bed and straddling Dean's hips, trying to get him to settle down. The hand Sam manages to grab is torn across the knuckles. There's a smear of something that must be blood on the wall right above the headboard.

"Dean! Dean, wake up, you're dreaming! Dean!"

He has both of Dean's wrists pinned down now, only Dean's straining against him, bucking his hips trying to throw Sam off.

"Goddamn it, Dean, _stop_."

Sam guesses the most effective tack would be to slap Dean, serve up enough pain to pull Dean out of his panic, but he can't, he won't. So he lies down instead, bringing his full weight to bear and covering Dean from chest to thighs, dropping his head down until his mouth is right against Dean's ear.

"Dean, you're home. You're with me. You're safe."

Then Dean's gasping, sucking in a jagged breath that _sounds_ painful, body stiffening, then relaxing in increments under Sam.

"Fuck." His voice comes out wrecked. "Sammy? Jesus, I – "

"Hey, yea, it's me, it's okay," Sam murmurs, nosing Dean's cheek before sliding off him. "You're awake now. You're fine."

"Haven't been pulled down that deep in – " Dean starts, still sounding disoriented, holding himself together by the skin of his teeth.

Sam sees tear tracks down his face, and when he turns to one side to wipe them off, Sam scoots over until they're an inch short of lying back to chest. There's a second spent feeling like they're dangling over a precipice rushing down to an unfathomable depth, before Dean meets him the rest of the way, slotting their bodies together, as easy as breathing. He reads it as tacit permission for him to curl an arm around Dean and splay his hand out on Dean's chest to find a heartbeat.

"The one memory that still has me by the throat," Dean slurs, voice still thick with sleep, coated with a nightmarish residue of gunpowder and death. "Thought we had the son of a bitch, but we got the wrong intel. Was a fucking ambush. Gunfire from every direction. And there was this – this fucking _kid_. Didn't have a damn clue why he was there. Barely old enough to know a real gun from a fake one. We tried. We couldn't – had to get my men out. Can't save everyone. That's what they teach you. It's how you're supposed to survive from one day to the next."

Dean's shivering, curling in on himself like something's taking a battering ram to the wall he's built brick-by-brick to keep the demons caged. Sam knows there's nothing he can say to exorcise them, not in one night, so he just presses his mouth against Dean's skin, planting one slow kiss after another down the line of his shoulder until Dean shifts. Until Dean rolls around, looks at Sam, eyes wide and dark and searching, and then fits their mouths together. It's soft, sweet, almost chaste, and it's not about sex, only about gratitude, closeness, finding something _good_ and holding on like hell.

Sam lets Dean take whatever he needs, arm curled around his waist, fingertips light against his spine. And then Sam holds him until he falls asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

They don't talk about it the next day, or the day after that. It goes from being the elephant in the room to an itch at the base of Sam's spine that flares up every time Dean tugs at the bandage around his knuckles. Five years ago, Sam might've backed Dean against a wall whether he wanted it or not, and stripped away Dean's options until the only one left was to talk it out; Sam always had a knack for oversharing as a kid. Sam, now, having internalized the value of playing his cards close his chest, leaves well enough alone. He gives Dean as much space as he needs and thinks about the taste of Dean left on his mouth the morning after, faint but distinct. Thinks about the feeling he couldn't shake off in the light of day: that Dean hadn't been kissing him, Dean had been affirming something he already knew to be true that Sam couldn't guarantee.

On the third day, Sam's in the middle of shuffling through a stack of affidavits, pen between his teeth, when Dean comes stomping through the living room, hand bandage-free, eyes gleaming with just about everything that spells trouble.

"Dude, you've been staring at that legal mumbo-jumbo since three o'clock." He leans in and snatches the papers out of Sam's hand, then shakes them in his face. "This shit is off-limits when you're on vacation. You know what normal people do on vacation, Sam?"

Sam leans back on the couch, plucks the pen out of his mouth, and says dryly, "Enlighten me."

Which is how he ends up hauling a crate of fireworks through the woods, relying on what little light the crescent moon's giving off to not trip and brain himself against a rock. In retrospect, he should've seen it coming from a mile away. The space Dean cleared out in the trunk before they left. The straight shot down 59, over the river. The number of times Dean dropped the word _explosive_ into casual conversation.

"Normal people don't go creeping around after dark setting off fireworks in the middle of October, Dean," says Sam once they reach the clearing, because he still remembers the prelude to this ludicrous excursion. 

"Aw. C'mon, Sammy. Just like old times." Dean grins and rubs his hands together. "Now quit being a little bitch and help me fire these babies up."

They bend down to pick out one Roman candle each. There's a minute of silence, overlaid by soft cricket song, before Dean speaks up again. 

"Remember the last time? Dad'd gotten that job up in Sioux Falls and we had three days to pack up the entire house."

Sam remembers. The blank look on Dean's face when he told Sam, the one that meant Dean was pretending it didn't hurt like hell for both their sakes. He remembers his heart dropping like a stone down to his feet, then dragging it around, heavy and bruised, all day before Dean drove them out here. They stood in this exact spot, orchestrating a light show that blanketed the sky in electric blooms of ruby and bronze and lime green until there was hardly a sliver of darkness left.

Yea, he remembers. And there was something else. Something Sam at 15 had felt in his bones but stopped just short of understanding, that Sam at 30 could articulate in no less than four languages: he'd been so goddamn in love with Dean. He had peered up at Dean under a sky on fire, choking on that love, thinking he'd sign away his soul for one more year with Dean given the choice.

"We nearly burned down the field," Sam says, aching nowhere he can reach as time folds in on itself impossibly. "Was a hell of a parting gift."

Without looking at each other, they light their Roman candles and watch them sizzle and spark before shooting out their stars. The pair of them burst simultaneously across the sky, low enough that Sam feels the pulse of heat through the atmosphere. 

"You ever think about the way our lives would've gone if – " The question's severed in half as if Dean would keep going if his voice would let him. 

Sam knows all about _if_. He knows all its disguises that trick you into letting your guard down until you find yourself in the belly of a beast that won't spit you back out. But out here, that danger's nothing more than an urban legend. Out here, with everything arranged as it was, down to the October air hovering between sharp and temperate, Sam feels cocooned in familiarity.

"I still go to Stanford, and law school, but then I come back. You find that job like you planned, renovating old, unwanted houses and making sure they're loved, lived in again. I get a job at the DA's office, and some days I forget why I do it. Some days I'm just so damn tired, but then you're there to remind me, every time. We do Thanksgiving, turkey, stuffing, the works, every year, and Mom always bakes an extra apple pie for you to take home."

When he turns to Dean, Dean's already watching him, so transparent and goddamn unafraid that he sees, for all Dean's the one who left, it's been Sam on a wayward path. He sees now what he missed before: that there's a part of Dean that's beautiful and untouched and _good_ for every part in him that's wrecked beyond repair.

"What're you trying to do, win a Pulitzer?" Dean says, always a goddamn riot, smiling like they're a forgone conclusion, regardless, and Sam – Sam lets himself want. 

Out here, half concealed in the dark, Sam lets himself replay all his fantasies in high definition. Kissing Dean, so deep and wet and thorough he's fully hard without being touched. Sucking Dean off then licking him open until the only words he's babbling as he begs are _Sam, Sammy, Sam_. Watching Dean ride him, chest and throat taut, marked up and down by Sam's mouth and teeth.

Sam lets himself skirt that edge of arousal, just shy of painful, and says, nodding at the crate, "We can't let the rest of these go to waste."

*

They don't speak on the drive home. The radio's turned to something acoustic, more Sam's speed, but Dean doesn't bitch so Sam leaves it on. He's going half out of his mind as it is, trying to read Dean's profile, stay in his lane, and remember how long it's been since he felt so out of his depth. (He knows the answer; he just can't own up to it, not when it makes him sound like a soulless son of a bitch.) 

By the time they pull up to the house, he's decided they'll both be better off if he goes straight to his room, locks the door, and doesn't think about Dean on the other side of the wall, whether he heard Sam the night before, jerking off with Dean's name thick in his throat. 

Only, Dean has other plans when they walk through the door. Dean shoves him against the nearest surface and kisses him, one hand fisting his shirt, the other gripping his jaw, and this time it's rough, scorching, and downright filthy. He's opening up for Dean on instinct, palms braced against the wall as Dean bites and sucks and licks his way in.

"Taste – so good," he mumbles against Sam's mouth, the sound and scent and heat of him already too damn much, pressing into Sam's skin and fusing with his bones.

Dean walks them left until Sam stumbles over the bottom of the stairs, hand shooting out to catch the banister before he falls flat on his ass and drags Dean down with him. It's about as graceful as it gets as they stagger up the stairs, attached at the mouth, hands all over each other like a couple of teenagers who can't keep it in their pants. When they reach the top, Sam lets Dean manhandle him into his room and drag his teeth through Sam's bottom lip before shutting the door, softly, as if his mom hasn't already figured out exactly what they're doing.

Sam takes a good look at Dean and his heart almost stops, because, Jesus – Dean, with his hair mussed, eyes heavy, and mouth slick and bruised, already looks like he's been thoroughly fucked. He's licking those lips like he's ready to go another round or five, but before Sam can pull him back in, before Sam can admit, _you have no idea what you do to me_ , Dean's coming to him.

Dean's grabbing him by the back of the neck, pressing their foreheads together, and telling him, so clear-headed and candid it hurts: "I still have days when I'm not sure where I am. I hear gunfire, I see blood on my clothes, I taste fucking sand in my teeth. But you make all that go away, Sammy. When I look at you, I know. I know what's real."

Sam doesn't answer. He breathes, feeling like they're standing in the eye of a hurricane that's about to shift course and rip them apart. He knows he should've told Dean to run. Hell, he should've stayed goddamn clear of it in the first place, but he's nothing if not a selfish son of a bitch. Even now there's something singing in his blood like a siren call, coaxing him into finishing what he started.

So he doesn't answer. He doesn't explain that it's impossible: he can't anchor Dean when Dean's the one making him feel lost at sea. In the dark, where there's no distinguishing land from water, he kisses Dean again, wet, greedy, hard enough his teeth draw blood, making Dean hiss and moan, then shove him backwards until his legs bang against the bed.

It goes more or less the way he imagined. The second they finish stripping, he's swallowing Dean's cock, sucking Dean off with his thumbs in the grooves of Dean's hips and Dean's hands gripping his hair, a litany of, _fuck, Sammy, so hot, God, so good_ tumbling out of Dean's mouth. He pulls off before Dean can come, flips him over, and starts licking him open until he can't string two words together, sounds dribbling out in a mess and soaking the sheets. Sam has half a mind to unravel Dean one thread at a time, just like this, only, Dean's twisting around, thighs clenching with resolve. Dean finds leverage out of nowhere to flip Sam onto his back and straddle him, lust howling in his eyes, straining on a tight leash that's ready to snap.

"How about we get this show on the road, cowboy," Dean all but purrs, hands hot as a brand against Sam's chest.

Sam opens his mouth to say if Dean's pick-up lines are half as bad, it's a wonder he's ever gotten laid. But then Dean's shifting up onto his knees and sinking down onto Sam's cock, like a seasoned hooker who knows all the tricks of the trade – except, he's so goddamn _tight_ that Sam's caught between stilling him right fucking now before it's all over, and driving into him as deep as he can take it. In the end Sam settles somewhere in between: holds onto Dean's hips and, watching deliriously, tries not to burn too hot, too quickly. He watches until it's no longer want, it's need twisted around his insides, sharp as thorns, and he's sitting up, coiling an arm around Dean's waist to twist Dean around onto his back. He wraps his legs around Sam like they've done this dance before, and Sam starts fucking him in earnest, rhythm not so much quick as unrelenting.

When Dean reaches for his cock, Sam grabs his hand, then the other, and pins them down to the bed on either side of his head, fingers tight as manacles around his wrists.

"No touching, just me," Sam says, strained, punctuating every other word with a deliberate snap of his hips. "Only me."

Then Dean's coming, Sam's name tangled up in a sob, with Sam right behind him, biting down on Dean's collarbone, orgasm slamming into him with the force of a cresting wave, making him shudder and crack.

Eventually he hears Dean's breathing even out, hears Dean say, "It's never been anyone but you, asshole," and feels the tide carry his pieces out to sea.


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as daylight starts spilling through the blinds, Sam slips out from under Dean, who's been liberally draped over him all night, mouth warm against his shoulder, a leg flung over his hip like he's a goddamn teddy bear. He'd say it's the kind of needy bullshit he goes out of his way to avoid, and kick out of his bed if it comes to that. It's just never been Dean in his bed. Dean loose-limbed and unguarded in sleep, less needy than territorial, and, physically, Sam's keening for that closeness, marking him as Dean's and no one else's. Mentally, he feels down for the count, vaguely hungover with none of the perks. He remembers all of it, down to the way Dean looked when he came: like it was agony only sweeter, from wounds knitting together rather than splitting him apart.

When Sam gets in the shower, he just stands under the spray for a while, braced against the tiles, temperature turned up to scalding as if the only way he can clear his head is to strip off that top layer of skin that still feels the hot pressure of Dean's mouth and Dean's hands.

He steels himself when he walks back into the room, and still the sight of Dean knocks the breath out of him. Dean's propped up on his elbows now, sheets low around his hips, not nearly heavy enough to hide that he's half-hard, blinking at Sam with those thick lashes that are even prettier when he's languid and content. But it's the purpling mark on his collarbone, in the exact shape and diameter as Sam's mouth, that makes Sam think he should _run_ but want to yank the sheets off Dean and pick up where they left off.

"What's the point of cleaning yourself up when you're just gonna get dirty again?" Dean grins, voice rough with something that sounds more like sex than sleep, but eyes still drowsy enough to look guileless.

The maddening contrast makes Sam grit his teeth, take a resolute step back towards the door before he says, "I need to get back to New York."

Dean blinks. "Okay. I thought we booked tickets for Wednesday."

"No, now," Sam says, bending down to collect his clothes from last night, separating them from Dean's. "There's a flight out of Kansas City in two hours. You can come with me, or you can stay. You're free to stay for as long as you want."

" _Now_?" Dean stares at Sam, incredulous. "We've been here three days. Jesus, Sam. The world's not gonna come down around your ears because you take a little time off. You can – "

"I can't," Sam says, and stops, even though he's run them headlong into an iceberg and that's just the tip of it. Something along the lines of _I can't give you what you're asking for_ would be more truthful and still just the half of it. But, as it turns out, he's also a coward who can barely face the mess he's made, let alone clean it up. "I can't, I'm sorry."

*

When they're standing on the porch saying their goodbyes, Sam hovers by his mom's shoulder, watching Dean lean into her hug, and lets himself soak up the secondhand warmth.

"You're coming back for Thanksgiving, you hear? No excuses. From either of you," she says when she pulls back, laying a palm against Dean's cheek.

"For that apple pie of yours, I'll be coming with or without Sam," Dean says, eyes sliding to Sam, the green in them as electric in the morning sun as his fireworks in the dark.

When he hitches his bag up his shoulder and heads to the car, Sam stays put with his mom's hand curling around his arm.

"I know what you're doing, Sam." He suspected this was coming; only, he'd imagined disappointment, not sadness, trailing some shadow of a thought that she could've protected him from this if she'd just been a little more vigilant and a little less willing to let him grow up. "I see the way you look at that boy – like you're scared you don't deserve him. Don't you think he gets a say in this too?"

He looks at Dean, who's leaned against the car, basking in the quiet of the suburban lane where change comes laboriously if at all, and clenches his jaw.

"He has it in his head that we can just go back to being Sam and Dean, reliving our greatest hits – the way you never forget how to ride a bike." Sam also suspected that one look from his mom would crack him open, and it would hurt just like this, like a broken bone when the adrenaline starts wearing off. "But that's not how people work, not after 15 years. And you know how I know? When he – when he calls me Sammy now, it sounds wrong. It reminds me that I'm not him anymore. I haven't been for so long I don't think I remember how."

His mom slides one palm up to cup his cheek and turn his head, while the other comes to rest against his chest.

"Oh, sweetheart," she murmurs, love pouring out of her, unconditional, as Sam lets himself sink into it like a stone. "You'll always be my little boy with a heart of gold. That's not something you lose. That steady beat in there – you just need to trust it again."

*

Dean gives him lip about his work-life balance the whole car ride to Kansas City. By the time they board the plane, though, he's smiling at Sam, touching him like he's forgiven Sam everything, and Sam can barely look at him. Sam would rather have pissed off Dean than this Dean who would let Sam lead him off the edge of the world, who makes Sam want to shake him by the scruff of his neck, to say, _don't be so goddamn naive_. He knows, if history is any guide, that Dean's trust comes in two sizes: all or nothing, and it's his most damning flaw. He's either walled up tighter than Fort Knox, or he's handing over every key to the kingdom. And they've been weighing Sam down, clanging in his pocket every time he moves, every time he fucking _breathes_ , like they won't let him forget he earned them, once.

When they walk out from baggage claim, Bobby's pulling up to the curb with uncanny timing. Once they slide in, he's navigating the car back out through the congestion with understated efficiency, unperturbed by the middle finger he flips the jackass who tries to cut him off at the ramp. Most days Sam goes so far as to say that Bobby – who's likely the only driver in the five boroughs with health, dental, and a 401k – deserves to be paid five times more than what he's willing to accept from Sam. Then there are days like today, when he catches Bobby peering at him in the rearview mirror, eyes too astute by half, and viciously regrets allowing him the latitude to think he's gleaned something intrinsic about Sam from the few minutes they take every morning to shoot the shit.

Only, Bobby is the least of his worries. Bobby he can handle, whereas Dean, who's pressing himself against the opposite door like he'd be climbing into Sam's lap otherwise, terrifies him. Dean has mapped out Hell from edge to edge and looks to Sam for his deliverance, now, when all Sam knows is an alternate way down. Dean's already shrinking inward, dimming under the bustle and noise that have multiplied tenfold since Lawrence, and still more beautiful than anything else Sam knows. He thinks God has a sense of humor after all, feeling the temptation roaring through him, thicker than blood.

So it takes that look from Bobby to bring him to heel, shame him into looking out the window and saying, "Drop me off at the office, Bobby. Then take Dean wherever he wants to go."

There's a beat of silence before Dean says, "Wow, Sammy. I was with you this whole time. When did you manage to shove that stick back up your ass, you sneaky bastard."

The flippancy gets a sharp laugh from Bobby and a "boy's got a mouth on him, all right," while Sam presses his lips together. Sam would hit back if he didn't detect the undercurrent of hurt, if he didn't know that was Dean applying his demented, puerile logic of an eye for an eye. For once, he's thankful that Dean's fundamentally incapable of talking about his feelings.

"Necessary evil," Sam supplies, and leaves it at that.

*

He'd expected Dean to be confused, wounded, and then belligerent. He'd banked on Dean rebuilding his walls in a quarter of the time it took them to come down. He hadn't anticipated Dean would be a persistent son of a bitch.

The texts start trickling in their second day back. Sam doesn't read them, but he doesn't delete them either. He lets them amass over the course of two days until the little red counter stops at 14 and stays there. It's a reprieve that stretches on, through his lunch meeting that's hijacked by the sanctimonious prick who replaced him at the DA's office, and an afternoon vetting plaintiffs for the class action suit no one else would touch with a 10-foot pole.

For twelve hours there's nothing but radio silence from Dean. Then the first voicemail comes through.

Logically, Sam knows he should wipe it. He knows that Dean's voice on his phone isn't all that far removed from Dean standing right in front of him, with nothing between them to blunt the radiant heat that unfurls in those eyes like a solar flare. But it's the tail end of a 15-hour day and he's too tired to do anything but sit on the couch with his shoes still on. He stares at his inbox, enclosed by a silence that feels less like solitude than solitary confinement, and panics at the thought of enduring this in perpetuity, this loneliness as biting and bleak as the depth of winter.

He's fighting for breath when Dean's voice floods the room, worry under the guise of hostility, in that way only Dean can manage.

"Goddamn it, Sam. I know you're busy being overlord of the empire or whatever, but will you just give me some kind of sign you're breathing? I'm giving you another 24 hours before I slap a missing persons report on your ass."

Sam replays it three more times, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, before the floor stops trying to slide out from under him. Then he wipes it from his phone.

Dean doesn't make good on his threat and he doesn't show up unannounced at Sam's loft or Sam's office. Instead, there's a voicemail in Sam's inbox by every afternoon like clockwork.

"You're freaking me out, man. Can you – I just need to know everything's okay. Write it on the window, send me a friggin' emoji. Jesus, Sammy. I'm supposed to be the emotionally constipated one, not you."

"People call me a stubborn son of a bitch but you're giving me a run for my money. You think I won't wear you down? I'm just getting started."

"You know what this is? This is Flagstaff all over again, you dick. But you remember how that one ended. Can't hide from me forever."

"I'm gonna kick your ass six ways from Sunday, you hear me? You don't get to do this, you fucking coward. You look me in the eyes, you tell it to me straight. Hell, you spit in my face, but you don't – God _damn_ it."

It's the one that almost makes him throw up. He turns his phone off after that, and for two days the compulsion vibrates through him like a seismic disturbance. It's not crippling or cataclysmic, but it's a near thing. So he doesn't try to make it to day three and he doesn't go home. He waits until the corridors are deserted and dim, then pours a finger of scotch. He reasons that all he's doing is waiting on Dean to let go. That he can't disengage when Dean's still wound around him so tight, still shoring up his faith at the end of every day. But if the last voicemail was any indication, Dean must've figured out this is nothing like Flagstaff. He'd found Sam in Flagstaff because Sam had let him. Sam hadn't run to escape; he'd run to make sure that Dean understood there was no amount of distance they could wedge between them that wouldn't feel wrong. That it became clear only after Sam set foot in Palo Alto that freedom and exile could be two sides of the same coin.

He downs the scotch in one and presses play.

"You know what? I get it. You have the life you want, laid out perfectly, and all I've done is screw that up. Had gone without a hitch for 15 years, and it took me, what, a week to send it off the rails? It – it didn't used to be this way. I remember when I could touch something and it wouldn't crumble – wouldn't turn into goddamn dust in my hands. I had a girl too, you know. Lisa. She was – god, she was beautiful. Her smile lit up your world like a fucking supernova. And she had this kid. Ben. A mouth on him like you wouldn't believe and the biggest heart. We were gonna do the white picket fence, the dog, the whole nine yards. But I had to do one more stint overseas – and when I came back, I just – I couldn't pull it together. I was too angry, too drunk, trying to walk a high wire over a minefield, and I – Jesus, I _scared_ her, I could see it in her eyes. I can still – Look, I don't need to be fucking – _healed_ , all right? If that's what you think this is, then you need to quit being such a friggin' girl. I just – let's just start over, okay? You, me, sparkling clean slate. Damn it, Sammy. Even if the odds are one in a million that I don't lose you all over again, I'll take it."

The silence once the recording ends is deafening. Sam sits at the edge of the sofa, sifting through the multitude of Dean's confessions, still heavy in the air like sins that need to be purged with words of absolution. When he breathes he can almost taste them, bitter as ash in his mouth, laced with the coppery tang of self-loathing that makes him want to heave. But it's the final one that makes him stand up. It's the way Dean tells him, _I'm so in love with you_ , tortuous and still plain as day, that makes him pick up the decanter and, without making a sound, fling it against the opposite wall. It smashes spectacularly, scotch and glass spraying in every direction. Sam stares at the rivulets darkening the wall and licks his lips, tasting smoke and salt.

The next day, Dean stops calling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there will be one more part! Poor planning, etc. FWIW, I'm sorry for the angst. Sam WILL stop being a moron; I promise.


	6. Chapter 6

For two weeks, Sam slides into a familiar routine. He goes on morning runs at an hour most people would call ungodly. He walks to the office unless it's raining, and then he has Bobby drop him off. He stops at Jack's bagel cart for coffee, black, no frills, with an everything bagel he still thinks, after six years, is Manhattan's best-kept secret. Most of his daylight hours he spends in meetings, color-coded on his calendar in accordance with Meg's personal barometer of how much he doesn't want to be there. He hauls ass to court twice to run damage control. At the weekly partners' meeting, he imagines shooting a spitball at Zach's forehead every time the asshole says, "we're family," or, "go-getter." When the office starts quieting down around 8pm, he goes home to take his calls from Hong Kong and Sydney. Unread emails accompany him to bed.

It's a circadian rhythm that reminds him of the groundwork he's been laying for upwards of five years, of the choices he's made, all deliberate, that have brought him to where he is now. And as he starts easing into a forward momentum, he stops punishing himself for the way he's been living, stops looking behind him for his halcyon years.

Which is why the first memory blindsides him.

"If you're just looking for a way to strangle me and make it look like an accident, I can tie my own bow tie."

Meg arches an eyebrow, fingers working efficiently at his collar. "You can bitch at me all you want, but I'm not the one making you go to this thing."

Sam hates it when she's right – almost as much as he hates going to these benefits. Slick black tie affairs packaged as philanthropy and reeking of hypocrisy. Seven times of out ten, there's no telling where the money goes. But he's no longer a prosecutor, and it's no longer his job to hold the rich accountable for their sins.

"I'm your boss, I can bitch at you all I want."

Meg just smirks as she tugs at the bow, then flips his collar down. "For a lawyer, you clean up nice."

That's when Meg disappears – and for a minute all he sees is Dean. Dean the night of his freshman dance, helping him with his bow tie, standing so close Sam could count those ridiculous lashes. Dean's faded Black Sabbath t-shirt at odds with his rented tux. Dean smiling with naked affection, telling him for someone so scrawny, he fills out a suit pretty good. Dean holding on, after, looking caught between playing brother and best friend, and Sam biting his tongue to keep himself from saying, _both, everything_.

"Sam. Sam, are you having a stroke?" When he blinks, it's Meg shaking him, hands small but vicious around his arms. In place of a bedroom with fern green walls and hand-sewn curtains, there's austere lines that make him shiver. Instead of a yard with a hulking oak tree out the window, he sees an urban constellation. " _Sam_."

He sucks in a breath, then rasps, "No. I don't – I'm fine. I'm fine. You should go home, it's late."

She gives him a slow, appraising look before turning to leave. "Okay, whatever you say. Boss."

He drops onto the couch after making sure she's gone, and, with his head in his hands, waits until he stops shaking.

*

After that the memories keep coming, as vivid as hallucinations, only, they never make Sam question what's real. Life can't upset its chronological order; Dean can't go back to being eighteen, or fifteen, or ten. The thing is, Sam starts thinking he'd be better off going crazy instead of feeling haunted, hollowed out by the cold clarity of a ghost that can't stay in the goddamn ground. And it's never quiet, never subtle about what it wants, always waits until Sam's guard is all the way down before raising hell.

At court, the judge bangs his gavel: Dean's dropping the hood of his dad's Impala, a smear of engine grease on his forehead, face alight like it always is when he fixes something broken, sending a thrill through Sam by proximity.

Michael taps his pen against the table while he talks out of his ass about professional growth: Dean's drumming against the steering wheel, warbling to "Desperado" with feeling and giving Don Henley a run for his money, shooting Sam beseeching looks until he forgets why he was ever pissed at Dean and joins in.

Edd walks into his office with powdered sugar on his face: Dean's pouring the batter for his mom's secret birthday cake while he holds the pan, and there's flour everywhere – the counters, the floor, the goddamn ceiling – but he's not thinking about the mess; Dean's licking the spoon and choking out, _son of a – we forgot the sugar_ , and then they're laughing, so hard it hurts to breathe.

The opposing counsel on an IP suit has the balls to call him Sammy: Dean's tight-lipped and pale as a sheet, transporting Sam to the hospital on the handlebars of his bike, fury incandescent, or maybe it's terror; Sam can't tell through the fog of pain from the bone he snapped jumping off the roof of the shed, trying to play Robin to Dean's Batman.

A month after Dean's last message, it's Sam who can't let go.

He's spent the better part of a week trying to work the irony down his throat when Ruby steps out of her office to crook a finger at him as he passes.

"If this is about the Invictus settlement, I'm handling it," he says, trying to preempt a lecture on diplomacy that would waste both their billable hours.

She perches on the edge of her desk in her white herringbone dress, tapping together white stilettos that look sharp enough to slit a man's throat. Her mouth, painted a violent red, twitches in amusement.

"It wouldn't need handling if you hadn't gone _Raging Bull_ without provocation. What's going on, Sam? You've been off your game."

No one with a survival instinct would overtly accuse Ruby of favoritism, but Sam doesn't have his head so far up his ass that he'd claim it's a level playing field. Anyone else pulling the shit he pulled yesterday would have one less client and their balls in a vise.

"Even DiMaggio couldn't bat a thousand every season," he deflects, smiling.

Ruby presses her lips together and watches him for a minute, face inscrutable.

"I'm pulling you off the class action, Sam."

He pauses in the middle of adjusting his tie clip. "I'm sorry. I thought I heard you say you're pulling me off the class action."

"It was time to cut our losses. I need you out there closing deals, not playing grief counselor."

Sam thinks about the plaintiff he interviewed last week: a mother in her 30s who looked him in the eyes, unflinching, and talked about her heartbreak as if the air wasn't steeped in it as soon as she stepped in the room.

"We knew discovery could take months," he says tightly. "No one's ever sprinted a marathon and won."

"It's done, Sam. They have new representation now."

He clenches his jaw. "Who?"

"Fergus Crowley."

"Goddamn it, Ruby," he says, keeping his voice low and anger hemmed in, for all he wants to grab the ugly bronze sculpture on Ruby's desk that looks like a deliberate bastardization of a Rodin and hurl it through the window. If there's anyone who would have a monopoly on Hell in the afterlife, it's Crowley. The opportunistic son of a bitch would sell his own children to turn a profit. "They'll be lucky if he leaves them enough for a cab ride home."

"It's not your problem anymore," she says, patently unmoved.

He runs a hand over his mouth. "Crowley doesn't do favors – so what was the deal?"

In the end, that's what makes her twitch – the reminder of that pound of flesh Crowley's waiting to carve out with a patience too calculating to be virtue.

"Everything I've told you up to this point has been out of courtesy," she says evenly. "I think we're done here."

"The hell we are. If we're whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder, I have the right to know the terms before I drop to my knees," he deadpans.

She stands up, eyes hardening, and enunciates her next words, making the threat crystal clear. "I may give you a long leash, Sam, but don't forget I'm the goddamn hand that feeds you. Now get out."

He heads straight for the restroom after that, knocking open the stalls to make sure they're empty before dropping his hands down against the edge of the last sink and staring into the mirror.

He looks like shit. His eyes are bruised from weeks' worth of sleep debt, his hair's too long because he just hasn't given a crap, his face is pallid under the artificial lighting – but his suit is impeccable, a three-piece of pure wool with peaked lapels, deftly cut to his exact measurements in a luxurious charcoal pinstripe. And for the first time since Ruby slid him an offer on the back of a napkin at Eleven Madison Park, it feels like a fiction. Like a page torn out of a book: a small-town boy clothed in a tiger's skin thinks, with blood in his mouth, that he can't stomach the carnage after all.

It figures that Dean would be the one to send him spiraling into an existential crisis and not even be around to watch it happen. That Dean would prise the truth out of him, with so little finesse but so much tenacity that it's as hilarious as it is excruciating when he finally yields, choking on a laugh as he yanks off his jacket, his vest, and finally his tie.

He leaves it all on the counter before he walks out the door.

*

He only gets as far as City Hall before it starts to rain. He's soaked through in five minutes, still making his way down Broadway when a car pulls up beside him and Bobby rolls down the window, looking like he's had it up to here with Sam's nonsense.

"Get in before you give yourself pneumonia, ya idjit."

Sam glances up at the sky, rain sluicing down his face, and says, "Yea, okay."

Bobby waits for him to slide in and shut the door before chucking a sweatshirt at his head.

"And change out of that sopping wet shirt. God almighty," Bobby grumbles, then tugs at his cap. "Where to?"

"Anywhere," Sam says, too busy remembering the time he ran home after school instead of catching the bus, only to get caught in a torrential downpour. Dean had been hot on his heels, hollering at him until he stopped, back hunched, fists clenched, trying not to take a swing at Dean, who, like always, never knew when to mind his own business and never trusted that Sam could take care of himself. He'd turned around and said, livid and mortified, that he didn't ask Dean to play protector, didn't need any of it so Dean could go find someone else to save to make himself feel like a hero. The cruelty, more reflexive than intentional, made him no better than the bullies Dean had whipped for making Sam bleed, and he'd seen the spasm of grief on Dean's face before Dean had told him to suck it up, that Sam wasn't gonna shake him off that easy.

"What are you doing, Sam?"

Bobby's staring straight ahead, adjusting the windshield wipers, and Sam frowns.

"I'm sorry?"

There's silence, a hum of impatience, and then: "If you had a lick of sense, you'd know better than to let a good thing go. In my humble experience, the world doesn't drop one of those in your lap whenever you please. It's a stingy son of a bitch on its best day."

They stare at each other in the rearview mirror for a minute, at an impasse. A few hours ago, Sam might've been pissed. A few hours ago, Sam probably would've taken Bobby's unsolicited advice and shoved it back down his throat. But now – he chooses to stay quiet, turning to look out the window at the black sea of umbrellas, and feeling one last knot loosen in his chest.

"The worst kind of regret is knowing in your bones that it could've been different if you'd just tried a little harder."

Bobby sounds distant all of a sudden, short of breath, and Sam finally says, gently, "Yea, okay, _Good Will Hunting_. You've made your point."

He turns away from the window in time to see Bobby's mouth twitch.

"It's the other way around, genius. Now do us all a favor and go fix what you broke."

That's when Sam realizes they're parked outside the coffee shop, even though there's no reason to think Dean had stuck around when there was nothing rooting him here – which means Bobby _knows_. Bobby had the gall to keep tabs on Dean behind Sam's back, driven by nothing as far as Sam can tell but the wholly groundless notion that Sam's a better man than he gives himself credit for. It's a selflessness that makes him want to cut through his own bullshit and say something _real_ , but he's long since been out of practice when it comes to gratitude that's unrehearsed or, for that matter, honesty.

So, for now, he says, "I can't promise anything. But I'm gonna try."

*

Dean's behind the espresso machine as Sam wends his way to the counter, thinking he should be more terrified of fucking this up, of already having fucked it up beyond redeeming; in all likelihood, Dean'll break his nose before he can get a word in edgewise, or worse, pretend it's all water under the bridge as if he can con Sam of all people.

Only, Sam stares at Dean and in place of terror there's a coalescing certainty: that any way this plays out, he's out of the woods, with nothing snapping at his heels that he can't outrun and the stars to guide him home.

Dean's spotted him by the time he reaches the far end of the counter, elbow narrowly missing the sign promoting diabetes under the guise of a delicious seasonal beverage, and, okay, so he's a little nervous. A mental state heightened by the fact that memory has never done Dean justice. Even when he's trying painstakingly to make his face as blandly neutral as Switzerland, he's beautiful – aloof in the exquisite, inimitable style of some Greco-Roman sculpture that hasn't lost a trace of its appeal since its genesis over 2,000 years ago.

Sam waits a beat, even though it's perfectly clear Dean would sooner slit his wrists than say anything that might remotely suggest he's in the mood for reconciliation.

When Sam finally says, "Can we talk?", the last word is drowned out by the seething noise of the milk steamer.

He waits patiently until Dean turns it off, then tries again. "Dean. Can we please – "

"Skim double shot cappuccino for Chris!" Dean hollers, sliding the drink across the counter, eyes skipping right by Sam, too casual to be anything but contrived, but Sam figures it's still kinder than he deserves.

He weighs his next words judiciously, deciding at this juncture that anything short of brute force or outright begging is only going to encourage Dean's mute obstinance.

"Okay, I'll talk, whether or not you want to listen," he says, adjusting the volume of his voice to outmatch the racket Dean's making behind the counter, because two can play at that game. Then he goes for broke. "I was a coward, all right? I ran away because I was fucking terrified, and convinced you were better off anyway. It's been – it's been years since anyone needed me like that. Asked me for anything beyond sex and legal advice."

It's blunt, it hurts like a bitch – and it's effective, because Dean's paying attention now, for all his eyes are still shuttered like anything he lets in or out would burn them both alive.

"But I didn't stop to think – it wasn't just anyone, it was you. Jesus, you – when we were kids, you gave me everything and I was too stupid to see it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being an ungrateful little shit. I'm sorry I yelled at you that day in the rain for being overprotective. I'm sorry I didn't understand that was just a side effect of – "

"Hey, man, what's the deal?" A guy in an eyeball-searing plaid suit walks up beside Sam, casting an irate glance at his Blackberry and then at Dean. "I've been waiting for my – "

"I'm trying to win back the goddamn love of my life here, I think you can wait a little longer for your afternoon caffeine fix," Sam snaps without looking away from Dean, whose eyes widen comically, throat moving but lips sealed, refusing to rise to the bait, so goddamn willful that Sam almost smiles.

"Um," the guy says, bewildered more than anything else.

Sam gives him a second to walk away.

"I'm sorry I turned my back the minute you needed me," he resumes quietly. "I can't promise I'll be any good at it, but I want to try. The truth is, what scares me is who I turned out to be. When you're fifteen, you never think that one day you might look in the mirror and hate what you see. But with you, Dean, I – I look at you and I remember who I wanted to be. So let me try. Please."

Dean stares and waits, jaw working, until the silence goes from long to excruciating, and then he speaks without warning.

"A month, Sam. No texts, no calls, not a word for a goddamn month."

Sam watches his opacity thaw into a fury that breaks the floodgates open – and beyond it, a hurt, dark and churning.

"I'm sorry," he says, drawing a sharp breath accompanied by a resonating ache.

Dean, understandably, looks even more riled.

"I don't know what makes you a bigger son of a bitch – running away, or coming back acting so goddamn sure I haven't already moved on."

"I'm sorry," Sam repeats at the risk of wearing it out, because he needs Dean to know: this is him at his most sincere, swallowing his pride and standing still so Dean can hurl as much abuse at him as he wants to start evening the score.

They go a few more rounds until Dean stops, abruptly, looking tired, and tired of taking swings at the fixed target, and rubs a hand across his mouth.

Sam uses the opening to ask, "Have you?"

Dean looks at him, a little startled. "Have I what?"

"Moved on?"

There's a moment of pure, abject terror that makes everything narrow to a pinprick, before Dean yields, not slowly like Sam would've imagined, but all at once, shoulders rounding, anger gone and in its place: a relinquishing of blame.

"I can't if you won't leave me alone, now can I," Dean grumbles, hostility so transparent Sam would wonder what the point of it was if he didn't know better.

"I'm sorry it took me so long," he says, heart still racing with residual adrenaline.

"You'll have to stop apologizing sometime, you know," Dean says, eyes warming, reminding Sam of summer nights spent on nothing but catching fireflies in jars and watching the balls of light, winking at them like stars.

"I kept remembering all these moments, from when we were kids. Stuff I hadn't thought about in years." He figures given everything he's confessed today, this is the least incriminating by far. "All the times you tried teaching me how an engine works before deciding I was a lost cause. The day I broke my arm trying to fly in my superhero cape and you threatened to break the other one if I did something like that again, the whole time you were biking us to the hospital."

"That's because you're a sap, Sammy," Dean says, voice a little rough this time, giving him away. "And no amount of lawyer douchebaggery's gonna change that."

"That's just about the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me," Sam murmurs, which isn't all that far from the truth.

"Might as well lay all my cards out on the table if I'm stuck with you now," Dean says, a little nervously, and to think, Sam had presumed until now that Dean wasn't equipped for declarations of love.

Then Dean sidles closer, eyes luminous with unfiltered affection and Sam can see it all: the tangle of lines, separate and mutual, leading back to their provenance, sending an electric current through him that feels like something halfway between faith and insanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: you have my eternal gratitude. <3


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